Whilst the Tooth Fairy Bird – the wild bird(s) that can survive and sustain and spread H5N1 – remains a theoretical creature, which has taken hold in the popular imagination and the brains of various journalists, the “experts” who believe in it are still virus people rather than ornithologists.
Instead, people who actually know about wild birds still doubt its existence.
French League for the Protection of Birds article here – machine translation.
http://www.protection-des-animaux.org/actualites/archives-512.html
The migratory birds are not the “rats of the sky”
Regarded too often as principal vectors of the H5N1, the wild birds
are transformed little by little into “rats of the sky”. The LPO
condemns this detrimental process with regard to an extremely
fragile. It biodiversity makes a point of pointing out the major
role played by the illegal transport of wild or domestic birds in
this file.
Some mesestimees realities
The wintering of the birds in Africa
During the summer 2005, whereas migratory birds of contaminated zones
(Siberia, Asia), were on the point of leaving their surfaces of
nesting for their districts of wintering, in Africa, with the
Middle-East, but also towards Australia, one predicted the emergence
of new hearths aviaires on these various destinations, and the
hecatomb of many wild birds to us. Actually, it does not have of it
anything be, in Africa but also in Australia and Nouvelle Zealand.
Nigeria
The confirmation, February 08, 2006, of the flu virus aviaire H5N1 in
Nigeria concerned, initially and exclusively, of the industrial
breedings of birds. To date, in Nigeria, no contaminated wild bird
was found. It cannot be excluded that the original tank of these
hearths is the poultry trade coming from China and Turkey. According
to the laboratory of reference of the animal World Health
Organization (OMSA) and Funds’ of the United Nations for the food and
agriculture (FAO), the stock isolated from the virus in Nigeria shows
the same genetic characteristics as that discovered in Turkey, which
itself are connected with the stock of the Chinese lake of the
province of Qinqhai, hearth of origin of the disease. *
Spain
February 15, 2006 in Benidorm, in the province of Alicante in Spain,
2 tons of poultries were seized. Imported illegally of China, they
were conveyed in Spain by truck. It seems that their final
destination was to be Chinese restaurants.
These poultry movements can take part seriously in the diffusion of
the virus through the countries and even the continents. They show
the importance of the frontier checks to dismantle illegal networks
of trade. This while at the same time “universalization processed
chicken in cash migrating and the movements of chickens around the
world occur 365 days per annum, unlike the seasonal migrations of the
wild birds” to take again the assertion of Leon Bennun, director of
international Birdlife.
Traffic of the birds of ornament
The illegal trade of the birds of ornament bound for France is
currently estimated at more than 4 million individuals each year.
This figure also corresponds to the number of legally marketed birds,
which represents nearly 8 million birds in all.
Among the sought birds, one notes that many sparrows are originating
in South Asia east and China, while the parrots come mainly from West
Africa and Tanzania. In the same way, other species come from South
America.
Consequently, without denying the possible role of the migratory
birds, the LPO stresses that, in spite of the put regulation opens
some to manage the crisis, it appears obvious that the involuntary
non-observance of measurements of precaution must also be taken into
account in the analysis of the situation.
Allain Bougrain Dubourg President of the LPO
Post edited by: martin, at: 2006/03/12 08:03